Craving The Player (Amateurs In Love Book 1)(65)
"You say it like it's a bad thing. We both know that you love it.”
"Just shut up and take me home."
"Yes, ma'am."
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sierra
"Knock knock."
Peeling my eyes off my computer screen, I blink past the burn from staring at the bright screen for hours and see Cole leaning in the doorway to my office. He’s wearing a light gray suit today with the sleeves uncuffed and rolled twice, paired with shiny black dress shoes. His aura is confident and arrogant, like he knows some big secret that nobody else does.
I haven’t had to spend too much time alone with Cole over the past two weeks, but this is the first time that he’s come across this way. Most of the time, he’s too concerned with trying to butter me up to let his true colours show. But I’ve always known this arrogance would make an appearance sooner than later. Most men like him have a strong arrogant side, one that doesn’t usually appear until they have you wrapped around your finger, unable to let their true personality turn you away, already too enraptured by them to care.
"Hi, Cole. What can I do for you?" I clear my throat and plaster on a smile. Cole was the last person I was hoping to deal with today. It’s just past lunch, and having been plagued with a killer migraine this morning, I skipped it, not trusting my stomach to handle anything other than a glass of flat Ginger Ale.
"Let me start by saying that you look beautiful today." Cole says the compliment with a grin that I see right through. I’m anything but beautiful today. With my finger combed hair and wrinkled clothes, I look ridiculously unprofessional. But after being woken up in the early morning with Braden’s tongue between my thighs, I fell back asleep way too late and slept past my alarm. It’s a miracle that I even made it today in the first place. I can’t say that it wasn’t worth the risk, though. Because it definitely was.
In the past two weeks since my first ever boxing match, Braden’s only managed to slither farther under my skin. When I’m not at the office, I’m with him. And in the moments that we’re not together, the thoughts of him consume me. I let them consume me. I should be more frustrated with how far inside my chest he’s managed to bury himself, and I hate that I ache for him to stay there forever.
My house, his house, dinner, the movies, we’ve been doing it all. I feel like a teenager again with all of this so-called “dating.” At least, I would consider it dating. I know that Braden does too. We haven’t exactly put a label on what we’re doing, but he’s been adamant that he hasn’t been seeing anybody else, and I haven’t even thought about anybody else since we first met. I’m sure that if I asked him for a label, he would give me one. But what pisses me off the most is that I can’t get myself to ask.
Labels bring something heavy and expecting to a relationship. The word girlfriend comes with the expectation of putting your partner above and beyond everything else. And I can’t do that. I can’t promise that I’ll put my life, my career, on the back burner for him if he asked me to. The ugly sinking feeling taking up shop in my stomach is exactly why I refuse to label our relationship. It would ruin what we’ve built. I know it would.
I turn back to Cole with an ache in my chest. My boss seems to think his compliment permits him to drag his eyes down my torso in a way that leaves me itching to wrap myself in a blanket. I swallow the wad beginning to form in my throat and stiffly say, "Thank you."
"I also wanted to stop by to personally escort you to the meeting happening in the boardroom in just a few minutes. It’s going to be a jaw-dropper.”
His words bring back the confusion that I felt when I opened up my emails this morning to see a meeting with the entire firm scheduled for today. It wasn’t posted on the calendar Friday, so it had to have been added over the weekend, although it’s highly unusual for such a big meeting to be planned on such short notice. A monday no doubt.
"The meeting, right. Did I miss an email about this meeting? It wasn’t on the schedule before I left on Friday and I wasn’t told about it until a couple hours ago in your email.” I fiddle with the pen on my desk, growing nervous that I missed something I shouldn’t have.
"Oh, no. The meeting was pushed up a few weeks. I understand your confusion, but I promise it'll make sense soon. Are you ready?"
Weird, but plausible. The tension drains from my muscles at the realization that it wasn’t my fault. After working at my previous job and missing the due date of our marketing pitch for one of my boss’s highest paying clients, I now make sure to check my calendar twice a day, terrified of making the same mistake. That mishap cost me a shit load of respect and nearly my job altogether.
With a reluctant nod, I stand and brush my sweaty hands down my skirt. Cole’s excitement is borderline revolting as he watches me closely, not moving from his spot in the doorway until I'm mere inches in front of him.
"Let's go then." He holds out his arm for me to take and with a long few seconds of hesitation, I do, not wanting to piss him off.
Luckily the board room is only a few doors down from my office, leaving only a couple of minutes of awkward silence between us. I can tell that he wants to talk to me, but I avoid him as best I can while being so close to his side. His good looks don’t have the same appeal as they did just a few weeks ago. It’s like someone has reached inside my brain and flipped off the Cole is attractive switch. And if I were to guess who that somebody was, I’m sure that I would be right.